Imagine a not-too-distant future where gasoline-powered engines disappear and we all travel in electric, driverless cars that don’t pollute the air. And, a future where the actual number of cars on the road decreases because we’ll all participate in a transportation sharing service rather than owning our own vehicles. That’s the vision presented by former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm in this energetic talk to the Goldman School of Public Policy as she describes its financial and environmental advantages but also outlines the new policy challenges. Among them, how to retrain professional drivers? What to do with empty parking lots? And how to replace the tax revenue generated by gas sales? Granholm’s eye-opening peek into the next decade will give you lots to think about next time you’re stuck in traffic.

Rapidly melting arctic ice, catastrophic hurricanes, devastating wildfires, and record-breaking drought; scientists agree that the climate is changing, that it’s human caused, and that it will undeniably be one of the most serious problems facing the world’s citizens for generations to come. They acknowledge that technologies to combat climate change do exist. How can we come together to address this challenge which has become a partisan political issue in the United States in a way it has not elsewhere in the world? In a lively and timely conversation, internationally recognized energy policy expert UC Berkeley Professor Dan Kammen, joins business leader and investor Tom Steyer, to discuss the pressing issue of the ever-changing environment. Climate Change, Politics and the Economy: Rhetoric v. Reality looks at where we are now, the solutions at hand, the barriers we face, and what must happen to “overcome the partisan divide” to speed the transition to a sustainable planet. For more programs, visit UC Berekley’s Goldman School of Public Policy series.

From the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB, get the highlights of recent findings from the 2013 U.S. National Climate Assessment. Severe Weather in the U.S. Under a Changing Climate follows University of Illinois Professor of Atmospheric Science, Don Wuebbles, as he explains the international 50-year rise in extreme weather, especially in heat waves and large precipitation events (i.e. hail, rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow). Research indicates that there will continue to be an increase in both droughts and floods in various parts of the U.S in the next century.

Conversations with History welcomes UC Berkeley’s Professor Mary Ann Mason to discuss her career as a university official, historian, and lawyer, as well as the changing role of women in academia and society.

Mason says moving to Berkeley at the end of the 60’s raised her awareness of issues, particularly the women’s rights movement, which was just beginning to gain momentum.

She was teaching history at a small college in Oakland when she joined the women’s consciousness raising movement. They held a gathering of women teaching history at four year colleges and they realized what a small group they were. There were only eight of them, in all of California. As for the UCs at the time, Mason reports that there were only 1.3 women historians for each campus.

Throughout her time in Berkeley, Mason watched the equality of women improve. When she got hired as a professor by UC Berkeley in 1989, about 15 percent of the faculty were women, which she reports is a huge improvement from just 2 percent in 1972.

As this scorching summer winds down, take some time to reflect on the extreme heat of these past few summers, with 2010 and 2012 contending to be the first and third the hottest summers on record in the U.S., respectively.

It’s hard to argue against global warming in the midst of a heatwave, but how directly does this extreme weather correlate to our carbon consumption? And what does a rapidly warming planet mean for our future?

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Science at the Theater series includes presentations from climate scientists Bill Collins, Margaret Torn, Michael Wehner, and Jeff Chambers and UC Berkeley economist, Max Aufhammer, who discuss the pace and consequences of climate change.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory presents Seven Big Ideas – 8 new episodes from the popular Science at the Theater series.

The first episode, Seven Big Ideas, features seven Berkeley lab scientists who have eight minutes each to introduce their revolutionary projects to the audience.

Meet Blake Simmons, who has been working on a plan to replace a barrel of oil with plants and microbes. But not just one barrel of oil, he says, his idea is intended to replace all the barrels of oil that keep countries all over the world moving.

He explains that oil produces many products for our carbon economy, such as gasoline, diesel, polymers and more. In order to undo our reliance on oil we have to find substitutes for all of these different products that the oil produces.

Watch “Seven Big Ideas” to hear about his plan to make replacing oil affordable and sustainable, as well as other game changing ideas from Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, Bill Jagust, and more!